lightening damage and how to protect?

[JimS]

For power panels I am planning to use this:
 
https://www.se.com/us/en/product/HOM2175SB/surge-breaker---homeline---22.5ka---120-240vac---1p3w---t2/
 
They are about $60 each from Lowes and other sources.  Will put one in house and one in detached garage.

 

[ano]

What sort of wireless will work at 200' through walls and with all of the potential interference in a garage when you are working. I have a similar situation and had no luck with wireless. I had to add a second access point wireless transmitter in the detached garage just to get wifi music around the yard while I'm mowing.
 
Mike.

EDIT - I should add that the wireless AP in the garage is connected to the gateway in the house by a buried Cat6 cable.

The have point-to-point WiFi systems that easily go 10 miles or more.  My house has two WiFi access points for my house and they track the "rogue" access points around my house, to pick the best channels to use.  At this moment they see 94 access points. I must live deep in the city? NOPE, about 35 miles from the city in the suburbs.  These are plain-old wifi access points. So if you don't think wifi travels, you are just not looking in the right place.  
 
The distance problem is NOT the access point, it's the phone or tablet. These devices have small radios and don't go far. So if you want to go 200 ft. you need to get one of the mesh systems out there, or at least use a regular router with a wifi "bridge" on the other end to pick it up and distribute it to your devices (wired).

 

[mikefamig]

I prefer hardwired over RJ-45 connectors in the Ditek, especially if teh out-building is damp or humid.
 
https://www.diteksurgeprotection.com/products/voice-data-and-signaling-protection/screw-terminal-connections/134-dtk-4lvlpx?ic=1
 
Mike.

 

[JimS]

mikefamig, on 12 Aug 2020 - 12:20, said:
I prefer hardwired over RJ-45 connectors in the Ditek, especially if teh out-building is damp or humid.

https://www.diteksurgeprotection.com/products/voice-data-and-signaling-protection/screw-terminal-connections/134-dtk-4lvlpx?ic=1

Mike.

You used this for Ethernet? Looks like you picked the 12V model. My garage will have conditioning which will control humidity so I think the RJ45 would be ok in that regard. The clamping voltage on this is a lot lower than the RJ45 POE protector so should give better protection.

This may be just what I need for my alarm communication bus between buildings too.

 

[LarrylLix]

I agree that wireless or optical fiber gives the best isolation - practically unlimited.  But optos are good for a lot more than a few hundred volts.  I design products with them and there are lots of them UL rated for 2500 VAC and higher.

Yes, the inside insulation is good for 2500volts but we found the pin gaps weren't. Lightning just jumps around the chip pins. If measures are taken to keep high frequencies noise down below a 1000 volts or so then maybe it works well but you still need a first line of defense that should work most of the time.

 

[kurtmccaslin]

I had surge protectors on both ends of my cat 6 and rs485 data cables and still had damage from a strike.   I tied the ground to the closest power outlet and apparently that was not good enough.   
 
I pulled pre-terminated fiber to two out buildings.   One at 300 ft and the other at 800 ft.   both worked plug and play.    I can give you more specs on the equipment I used if you are interested.

 

[mikefamig]

You used this for Ethernet? Looks like you picked the 12V model. My garage will have conditioning which will control humidity so I think the RJ45 would be ok in that regard. The clamping voltage on this is a lot lower than the RJ45 POE protector so should give better protection.

This may be just what I need for my alarm communication bus between buildings too.

I have both ethernet and 12 volt power lines to the garage. That part that I linked to is one of the devices that I found in my old email and I just showed it as an example.
 
Mike.

 

[JimS]

I had surge protectors on both ends of my cat 6 and rs485 data cables and still had damage from a strike.   I tied the ground to the closest power outlet and apparently that was not good enough.   
 
I pulled pre-terminated fiber to two out buildings.   One at 300 ft and the other at 800 ft.   both worked plug and play.    I can give you more specs on the equipment I used if you are interested.

Yes.  If you can provide the equipment details that would be very helpful.  I have buried conduit with long sweeps so could pull fiber.  Ethernet would be easy to route over that.  Not sure how I would use fiber for the Caddx alarm bus.  I am planning the garage to be a sub panel of the house panel with several zones.  I suppose I could make the garage zones into a switch closure that goes to a zone on the  house panel for ease of isolation but it is preferred to have it connected by bus with individual zone reporting.  I pulled three runs of cat5 cable for a spare or other signaling and could likely route any other switch closures and such over the ethernet connection.

 

[JimS]

I had surge protectors on both ends of my cat 6 and rs485 data cables and still had damage from a strike.   I tied the ground to the closest power outlet and apparently that was not good enough.   
 
I pulled pre-terminated fiber to two out buildings.   One at 300 ft and the other at 800 ft.   both worked plug and play.    I can give you more specs on the equipment I used if you are interested.

How close to the power panel was the outlet?  The length of the ground wire can make a big difference.  In my case the power and run from the other building are right next to one another so the connection would be very low resistance/inductance.  Even with a very good ground it won't be able to protect against everything.

 

[RAL]

Not sure how I would use fiber for the Caddx alarm bus. 

I believe Caddx uses RS485 for their bus.  There are RS485 optical converters available that might work. 
 
Elk also uses RS485, but their bus has timing problems with the converters, and so it doesn't work with Elk.  Might be worth a try with the Caddx, though.

 

[RAL]

I had surge protectors on both ends of my cat 6 and rs485 data cables and still had damage from a strike.   I tied the ground to the closest power outlet and apparently that was not good enough.  

 
With any surge protector, you want to provide the shortest, straightest, low impedance path to your electrical panel's ground rod as possible.  An outlet ground usually just isn't good enough, as the ground wire is small gauge (12 or 14), and has lots of bends and splices along the way back to the breaker panel.
 
All surge protectors have limits of how big a surge they can handle, and If a lightning strike is close enough, the surge can overwhelm the protector.

 

[RAL]

For power panels I am planning to use this:
 
https://www.se.com/us/en/product/HOM2175SB/surge-breaker---homeline---22.5ka---120-240vac---1p3w---t2/
 
They are about $60 each from Lowes and other sources.  Will put one in house and one in detached garage.

That's not a bad SPD in terms of specs.  But one thing to understand is that the breaker style SPDs provide less protection than the type that mount outside the panel.   The breaker types provide line-to-line and line-to-neutral protection, but not line-to-ground nor neutral-to-ground protection.
 
i would recommend the Eaton CHSPT2ULTRA.

 

[JimS]

That's not a bad SPD in terms of specs.  But one thing to understand is that the breaker style SPDs provide less protection than the type that mount outside the panel.   The breaker types provide line-to-line and line-to-neutral protection, but not line-to-ground nor neutral-to-ground protection.
 
i would recommend the Eaton CHSPT2ULTRA.

True.  Thanks, I missed that.  The main panel has the neutral bonded to ground so it doesn't matter there but the subpanel should really have ground to lines and neutral protection.  Wonder why the breaker types don't include ground - it would just be an extra wire to that bus bar.  Guess they figure most are in main panels where ground and neutral are bonded together and they would be right.  The market for subpanel protectors must be quite a bit less.

 

[JimS]

I believe Caddx uses RS485 for their bus.  There are RS485 optical converters available that might work. 
 
Elk also uses RS485, but their bus has timing problems with the converters, and so it doesn't work with Elk.  Might be worth a try with the Caddx, though.

Will have to look at the chip numbers on their boards.  Shouldn't be too hard to confirm RS485.

 

[RAL]

Will have to look at the chip numbers on their boards.  Shouldn't be too hard to confirm RS485.

I was just looking at the manual for the NX-8.  Looks like I was mistaken and it doesn't use RS485, since the keypads have just a POS, COM and DATA wire interface.